A long, loud scream tore from her throat, and abruptly galvanized into action, Hallie bolted from the room, yelling frantically for Aunt Gwen.
“Hallie! Hallie, what is it, dear? What’s wrong?” The elderly lady came scurrying from her own bedroom, flicking on lights and clearly alarmed.
“Oh, my God, Aunt Gwen! There’s a—a monster at my bedroom window!”
“A—a monster! Oh, Hallie, child, surely it was only a bad dream!”
“No, no, it was a monster. I saw it, I tell you! Oh, God, we’ve got to get Trace…call the sheriff’s department. Is there a gun in the house?”
“There are…there are rifles and shotguns in the gun case downstairs. But if you’re talking about a handgun, no, Hennie never kept anything like that around here.”
Just then, as the two women stood clutching each other in the upstairs hall, a sharp, short bark followed by a low, vicious growling reached their ears, and then there was sound of someone or something crying out and footsteps pounding along the upstairs verandah outside.
“There! What did I tell you! Call the sheriff, Aunt Gwen! I’ll fetch Trace!”
“No, don’t you dare go outside, Hallie! We don’t know who—or what—may be out there. Why, if—if you ask me, it doesn’t even sound human!”
“I can’t just leave Trace alone out there in the tack room. Whatever’s out there might attack him!”
Without further ado, Hallie raced downstairs to the library, to where the gun case stood against one wall. Much to her relief, a frantic rummage through her grandmother’s desk produced what she hoped was the right key, and with trembling fingers, she inserted it into the lock. Once she had got the glass door open, she jerked out an old-fashioned, double-barreled shotgun, then realized she had not a clue as to how to load it.
Praying it already contained shells, she ran to the kitchen’s back door and, after peering through its window to be certain there was no one about, unbolted it and flung it open wide.
“Trace!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Trace!”
“It’s me, Hallie. I’m here.” He spoke softly, startling her horribly by suddenly materializing like a wraith from the shadows, barefoot and naked to the waist, revealing a muscular chest matted with fine black hair, reminding her uneasily of the man-beast in her dream. “Is that gun loaded?” he asked.
“Yes…no…I don’t know,” she gasped out, trying to catch her breath. “What—what are you doing here, Trace? Why aren’t you in the tack room?”
“I’m a light sleeper, and when I heard all the ruckus, I got up to investigate. Get back inside the house.” Expertly, it seemed to her, he broke open the shotgun. “It’s empty. Where are the shells?”
“In the gun case in the library.”
“Get them, while I keep watch. Hurry, Hallie!”
Quickly, she pelted back to the library and, from the bottom of the gun case, grabbed an open box of what she hoped were the right shells. Much to her relief, when she returned to the back door, Trace accepted them without question, deftly loading two of them into the shotgun, then snapping shut the breech.
“Lock the door behind me,” he ordered, “and don’t open up again unless it’s me or the law outside. Do you understand?”
Hallie nodded, swallowing hard.
“I won’t. Trace…be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just keep yourself and Mrs. Lassiter safe.” Then, without another word, he headed into the moonlit darkness.
As Hallie watched him disappear, she was eerily struck by how much he seemed to have metamorphosed into a wolf in that moment, running with his body bent low, his long, shaggy hair streaming back in the wind. It appeared almost as though he were no longer human, and his words to her earlier about a true shaman or witch being able to bind a man and a wolf as one suddenly returned to haunt her.
What did she know about Trace, really?
Shivering a little, Hallie closed and bolted the door, nearly jumping out of her skin when Aunt Gwen suddenly appeared in the kitchen.
“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, child,” the older woman said. “I’ve phoned for Sheriff O’Mackey, and he’s on his way here. I take it that was Trace at the door, that you managed to wake him. My goodness, I hope he’s not gone out there unarmed!”
“No, he had one of the shotguns from Gram’s gun case—and he certainly seemed to know how to use it, too.”
“Trace is a man of many talents, I suspect. Why don’t I make us a cup of hot tea, Hallie? I always find that so soothing.”
“You have one if you like, Aunt Gwen. To be honest, what I could really use right now is a drink.”
“Well, dear, as you probably know, nobody in the Dewhurst family has ever held with hard liquor—and that included Hennie. However, I do know she kept a bottle of apricot brandy around here somewhere, which she would occasionally have a sip of after supper. Yes, here it is,” Aunt Gwen announced triumphantly, as she pulled the bottle and two snifters from one of the kitchen cabinets.
After pouring the brandy into the glasses, she handed one to Hallie.
“Drink up, child. I’m sure you’re right, and that it will help to steady our nerves. I just hope Sheriff O’Mackey doesn’t smell the alcohol on our breath and assume we were hitting the bottle and imagined this entire dreadful episode. Now, tell me about the…the monster, as you called it, that you saw at your bedroom window, Hallie. What did it look like?”
“Ghastly…just absolutely ghastly, Aunt Gwen! I’ve—I’ve never before seen anything so hideous in my entire life. That’s—that’s why I thought it was a monster. It just—just didn’t seem human…all distorted and, and somehow crumpled, an awful shade of red and white, like a…a demon or something.”
“Oh, dear, after I’d had a brief chance to calm down a little and think, I thought perhaps that’s what it was. Rest assured, it was no monster, child, but a real human being, however abominable in appearance he seemed.
“You see, I think it was Scarecrow you saw—although why he was peering into your bedroom window, especially at this wee hour, I simply can’t imagine. But, then, he’s really not all there in the head, so maybe he’s finally gone completely off the deep end.”
“Scarecrow?”
“Yes, unfortunately, however cruel it may sound, that’s what everybody calls him—although not out of any desire to hurt him, I hasten to assure you, but because that’s the name he gives himself when asked. I don’t believe anyone knows his real name, not even he himself.
“He was badly burned, you see, in a terrible fire at a warehouse sometime before he moved to Wolf Creek. It left him grossly disfigured, his face all twisted, one eye askew, and, yes, his skin badly crumpled, as you said, from all the grafts that were necessary to save his life. It’s truly a miracle he even survived.
“Anyway, nobody’s ever been able to identify him properly, because none of us knows where he came from. He just showed up in Wolf Creek one day, a very long time ago, Hennie told me once—in fact, if I recall right, it was shortly after you went to live with Aggie and Edie during your childhood. And if his fingerprints are in any law-enforcement database, they’re useless now. His hands were burned, too, and are awfully scarred.”
“I see. Well, naturally, I’m very sorry for the man. Still, Aunt Gwen, he’s a Peeping Tom, at the very least, and quite possibly even dangerous!”
“Hallie, I know it seems like that to you at the moment, and I don’t blame you for feeling that way, either. But in all honesty, Scarecrow has never hurt a single soul in town, and I’ve never heard any reports about him being a Peeping Tom, either. I simply can’t imagine what possessed the man to clamber up to the upstairs verandah and peer inside your bedroom window.”
“Well, maybe he’s finally flipped—just as you said.”
There was no time for further conversation, because by then, Sheriff Ned O’Mackey had arrived, the red and blue lights on his patrol car flashing brightly in the front yard a
s he pulled up on the circular gravel drive.
Trace greeted him out front, briefly explaining the situation. Then he and the sheriff came into the house, so Hallie could make a full report.
“It sure sounds like old Scarecrow,” the sheriff agreed slowly, chewing on the end of the pencil with which he was making copious notes on a small, spiral-bound pad. “I don’t know what came over him, Ms. Muldoon. Maybe he’s gone clean off his nut at last, like your great-aunt suggested, or maybe he just got liquored up and took a wild notion to have a gander at you.
“I mean, you’re newly returned to Wolf Creek, ma’am, and you’re the spitting image of your mama, besides. I always thought she was one of the prettiest gals in town when she and I were growing up. It’s a real shame she died so young.
“Anyway, if it’s all right with you two ladies, Trace here’s going to take me upstairs to have a look at the verandah. I understand there was some sort of a fracas up there…that Scarecrow was attacked by a vicious dog or something during his Peeping-Tom activities. You got any dogs on this farm, Ms. Muldoon?”
“No, Sheriff,” Aunt Gwen answered, at her great-niece’s inquiring glance. “After the last one died, Hennie told me she wasn’t going to get another, that she was too old to be taking care of a hound dog anymore, and she couldn’t abide those little frou-frou pedigreed mutts so many elderly ladies seem to have these days.
“So I’m afraid all we’ve got here at Meadowsweet is an old tomcat, who’s way too sassy and independent for his own good…comes and goes just as he pleases. I haven’t even seen him for a couple of days now.”
“I—I think maybe it…maybe it was a wolf that attacked Scarcecrow,” Hallie said hesitantly. “Possibly even a rabid one.”
“What on earth would make you think that, ma’am?” the sheriff asked, a puzzled frown knitting his brow.
At some length, hoping she did not sound as though she were as crazy as Scarecrow appeared to be, Hallie explained what had happened the previous evening, how the huge black wolf had run out in front of her car, then leaped on its hood.
“I was going to tell Aunt Gwen about it, but…what with trying to get settled in and all, I just forgot, and I didn’t really want to discuss the matter with anybody else, Sheriff, because I’m well aware how wildly improbable it sounds. Still, it did happen, and if the wolf is rabid and has bitten this man, Scarecrow, then he needs immediate medical treatment.”
“Yes, you’re certainly right about that. I’ll issue a bulletin and get some officers out right away to search for him. He lives in a little shack up the road a piece, and that’s probably where he’s gone. I don’t believe he’ll have run away or anything like that.” Folding up his notepad, Sheriff O’Mackey turned to Trace. “You want to show me that verandah now, son?”
“Yes, sir. We can go back outside and up the external stairs. Then we won’t have to traipse through Ms. Muldoon’s bedroom.”
“That’d be fine. Lead the way.”
Once the sheriff had finished inspecting the verandah, then got back into his patrol car and, after yakking briefly on his radio, driven slowly away, Trace returned to the farmhouse to ensure that Hallie and her great-aunt were all right.
“You’re one of the chosen ones, you know, Hallie,” he told her after Aunt Gwen had bidden them both good-night and gone back upstairs to bed. “Otherwise, you would never have seen that great black wolf, and he wouldn’t have appointed himself as your protector…wouldn’t have been keeping an eye on Meadowsweet nor gone after Scarecrow, either. It’s rare for wolves to attack people. He must have thought the old lunatic intended you some kind of harm.”
Hallie shuddered visibly at the thought.
“Why would this man, Scarecrow, want to hurt me?” she wondered aloud. “I’ve never done anything to him. I don’t even know him.”
“I don’t know.” Trace shook his head. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he only wanted to get a look at you, just as the sheriff said. You are a very attractive woman, Hallie. I noticed it right off, when you opened the front door this morning,” he declared, smiling at her.
“I wish you’d keep those kind of thoughts to yourself!” she hissed, annoyed—although if she were honest with herself, she knew she would admit she was secretly pleased he appreciated her blond good looks.
“Honestly, Trace! I’ve just had two of the worst days of my entire life, and the topper was having to tell the local sheriff about that wolf’s bizarre behavior. It’ll probably be all over town tomorrow that I’m as loony as Scarecrow! And you just stand there, flirting with me.
“Why is it that every single man alive believes every problem around can be solved by a quick roll in the hay?”
“They don’t. They just think they’ll feel a whole lot better about their problems afterward!” he insisted, now grinning at her impudently.
“Where’s that shotgun?” Hallie queried, wondering if it were him or the snifter of apricot brandy that had gone to her head.
“Back in the gun case. You don’t actually think I’d be fool enough to stand here teasing a spitfire like you if I thought you had a shotgun handy, do you?”
“Good night, Mr. Coltrane!”
“Good night, Ms. Muldoon. Sweet dreams.”
Chapter 12
Settling In
C limbing the staircase in the main hall to her bedroom, Hallie thought she would probably not get another wink of sleep that night. The disturbingly erotic dream that had haunted her earlier, capped off by seeing the poor disfigured lunatic, Scarecrow, at her window, would surely keep her wide-awake, tossing and turning restlessly.
But in the end, whether it was the warmth of the brandy or of Trace’s smile, once she was again safely in her bed, she found her eyelids growing heavy, and without even realizing it, she slipped into slumber within minutes, eventually sleeping so deeply that the following morning, she did not awaken until noon.
Even then, she might have continued abed, had not a gentle rap on her door been followed by Aunt Gwen and, trailing close in her wake, Trace bearing a breakfast tray.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” he greeted her, smiling lazily at her. “The day’s a-wastin’, and there are cows to be milked and chickens to be fed.”
“We no longer have any cows here at Meadowsweet,” Hallie said crossly, drawing the blankets up around her to shield her body, clad only in her nightgown, from his dark eyes. “Aunt Gwen, you didn’t need to prepare a breakfast tray for me!”
“I told her that…that given the late hour, a lunch tray would prove much more appropriate,” Trace announced. “Still, after last night, she insisted on allowing you to sleep and on fixing the tray, as well—and because I’ve always been a sucker for a damsel in distress, what else could I do but carry it upstairs for her, it being way too heavy a burden for her, of course.
“And frankly, it’s just as well I did, because in the process, I noticed the carpet runner is loose on one of the steps, that some of those brass carpet rods could really use tightening up.”
Carefully setting the tray on Hallie’s bed, Trace snatched up the linen napkin, whipping it from its folds and tucking it neatly into the bodice of her nightgown. During the process, he grinned as though he were fully aware of her dismay at his action and of her current reluctance to put him firmly in his place, when Aunt Gwen stood there beaming with delight at the two of them, like some mischievous matchmaking mama from a Regency novel.
“Tea?” he queried, raising one eyebrow mockingly as he gazed at Hallie and deliberately moved to block the elderly lady from her view.
In response, realizing her great-aunt could no longer see her, Hallie childishly stuck her tongue out at him.
“There. I knew that would make you feel better,” Trace observed, feigning a deadpan expression as from the china pot on the tray, he poured her a cup of hot Earl Grey tea.
“Yes, indeed. Tea is always the best cure for anything, I always say,” Aunt Gwen declared innocently, wholly ignorant of Hallie’
s behavior and Trace’s true meaning.
At that, Hallie nearly choked on the tea she had drunk from cup he had handed her, and she saw Trace himself was having difficulty keeping his shoulders from shaking with laughter.
“Beast!” she hissed at him, under her breath. “For shame!”
“I have none,” he whispered, bending over her, pretending to arrange the tray more closely about her. Then he rose and, in his usual voice, said, “Well, now that’s taken care of, I’d best fetch my toolbox and start on those stairs in the main hall.”
Had Aunt Gwen not been present, Hallie would have been sorely tempted to fling the teapot at his retreating back. Truly, she did not know what was the matter with her. Richard, her ex-husband, had never aroused such tumultuous emotions in her, making her fingers itch to do him some violent act. But Trace was simply maddening.
It was hard for her to believe she had known him for only a couple of days. Somehow, she felt as though she had known him all her life, had connected with him on some deep level she and Richard had never managed to achieve, despite the two years she had dated him and the three she had spent as his wife.
In the days and then the weeks that soon passed, it was a feeling Hallie was to experience time and again, as she and Trace gradually settled into life and a routine at Meadowsweet. More than once, she was to think they might have been an old married couple, so well were they to work together and so attuned were they to each other’s thoughts and wishes.
Still, there were times when he unnerved her, as well, when she remembered that night when he had seemed to her to metamorphose into a wolf, and she entertained weird and perplexing notions about him, wondered if perhaps he were not truly human. Whenever that happened, she could only scowl to herself, thinking that she was undoubtedly letting her imagination run away with her again.
It was sometime after that evening when Hallie had spied Scarecrow peering through her bedroom window that Sheriff O’Mackey returned with the badly disfigured man in tow. She, Trace and Aunt Gwen were out on the verandah, taking a break from their labors and enjoying tall, cool glasses of lemonade when the sheriff drove up.
From the Mists of Wolf Creek Page 11
